We are looking for an enthusiastic and able individual to fill the role of Policy Assistant, working in both the Resources & Governance and Research & Knowledge Exchange teams. The successful candidate will provide administrative and secretariat support to a number of policy committees and will support the work of Senior Policy Officers by contributing to the analysis and development of policy affecting (i) the resourcing and governance of higher education institutions and (ii) academic research and its dissemination in the wider economy and society. The postholder will also provide secretariat support directly to an external organisation, the Board for Academic medicine. This role is an opportunity to work at the centre of Scottish higher education and to play a part in shaping the policy environment to support the sector’s success. Full details on the vacancy and on downloading the application form can be found here

Universities Scotland has today, Tuesday 3 February, published its response to the Scottish Government's university governance consultation.

You can read the response in full here. Professor Pete Downes, Convener of Universities Scotland, has commented on a number of aspects of the university governance consultation, which can be read here.

On university autonomy and diversity, Professor Downes said: "Principals believe in inclusive, transparent and robustly accountable models of governance and to that end we have common ground amongst our stakeholders and Government. We are utterly convinced that universities are most successful when they can operate with high levels of autonomy as the evidence from around the world supports this. Therefore some of the proposals are very worrying as they would unquestionably move Scotland towards a less autonomous model of university governance and impose greater uniformity in a one-size-fits-all approach."

Today (Thursday 18 December) sees the publication of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 results for all 154 higher education institutions across the UK. Every one of Scotland's higher education institutions undertakes reseach judged to be of "world-leading" quality with 77 per cent of Scottish research submitted to REF2014 judged to be "world-leading" or "internationally excellent". Scotland also performs more highly than the UK average on impact of its research; a new measure for REF2014. 85.8% of Scotish research was judged to be at 4* or 3* leavels which means the research has had "outstanding" or "very consideratble" impact (compared to the UK average of 83.9 per cent). Read our full news release.